Woman Survives 17-story Fall From Dorm

April 30, 1987|By Barbara Mahany.

Although she was suffering multiple fractures of her limbs and back after a 17-story fall from a dormitory window at Illinois State University in Normal, an 18-year-old Aurora woman was nevertheless alert and asking questions Wednesday from her hospital bed.

And her mother was calling the sapling that broke her daughter`s fall ``a miracle tree.``

Mary Zilly, a freshman at the Downstate university, told her mother, Alice, that she had been waving to a friend in the parking lot Tuesday while leaning against the screen window in her 18th-floor room in Clay House, part of the Watterson Towers dormitory complex. Then the screen broke off, and she tumbled out the window, she told her mother.

Zilly was reported in critical but stable condition in Brokaw Hospital in Normal. A hospital spokesman said the six physicians consulting on the case were ``amazed`` that she was alert and answering questions.

``Her fall was broken by that tree, thank God, or she would have been gone,`` Mrs. Zilly said Wednesday from her daughter`s bedside.

After striking and breaking a branch off the small tree below her 28-story dorm, Zilly landed on a soil mound covered with wood chips, just a few feet from a paved lot, her mother said.

``It is a tremendous miracle, really. She`s been alert the whole time. She gave them my phone numbers at the emergency room,`` said Mrs. Zilly, a nurse at the Aurora Area Blood Center and the mother of four other daughters. ``She`s doing amazingly well. The doctors tell us there`s a good chance she`ll have a 100 percent recovery.``

The hospital spokesman, Bill Adams, said Zilly had no major internal injuries. Though there were bruises on her lungs and left kidney, he said, her lungs were functioning well. Despite several broken bones in the spinal column, most significantly a fracture in the third lumbar disc, there was no harm to the spinal cord and no sign of paralysis. Zilly also suffered a broken ankle and broken left forearm.

``It seems that there are times when we must all put our lives in God`s hands,`` Zilly`s parents said in a statement read at a Wednesday news conference in Normal. ``God has certainly intervened during Mary`s fall and her treatment. We hope you will continue to pray for Mary`s recovery.``

``Foul play has definitely been ruled out,`` said Sgt. Keith Gehrand of the university police. ``And we just haven`t concluded anything else yet.``

Gehrand said several witnesses heard Zilly scream and saw her hit the ground. He said that Zilly, a business student, had been alone in her room and that the screen of the window was torn out, apparently when Zilly fell.

Zilly`s roommate, who was in a math class at the time, told police she had seen Zilly earlier in the day and did not notice an indication of problems.

Zilly attended Rosary High School in Aurora. Her father, Fred, is a real estate broker in the Kane County city.